The rest of the towpath

21.53 miles completed today
56.85 miles completed total

I got behind in my blogging because the weather has been so nice we have just been walking fools.  We have been walking everyday to try to make good use of the weather.  Typically around this area at this time of the year we still have snow.  This weather has been so unusual that I haven't wanted to miss a minute.  Since I'm so behind I'm just going to lump the last 6 days together. 
We have seen so many wonderful things over the past week or so.  Sometimes my camera worked and sometimes it didn't.  I have borrowed both of my daughters' cameras, so hopefully things will improve on the camera front from now on.  Of course with nature it is hard to get close enough so I don't have pictures of everything we saw. 
We saw various frogs, turtles and snakes.  Here are a few of the different species.

So there ya have it.  Pictured and not but we saw green frogs and bullfrogs.  Garder snakes.  Red-eared sliders, painted turtles, snapping turtles and a turtle I couldn't identify.  We got excited every time we saw a new one and I had tons of pictures.  Most were bad but we had fun trying to get them.  We probably saw 300 turtles during our 20 miles.  All sizes too.  They ranged from an inch and a half in diameter to at least 2 foot across for the snapper.  The unidentified one came up and sat right next to me while I was obseving some ducks.  He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
Here are some lock pictures.  I had more of these but did have some camera malfunction. So here is what I have left.

The first locks I believe are all the same.  I do know the last one for sure is different.  It is a Guard Lock  A Guard Lock was where a stream or river crossed the canal.  It was used to control the cross flow of water into the canal.  Guard locks were rarer in the north than the south.  In fact, this particular guard lock is the only one between Clinton and Cleveland.   
We saw some interesting birds.  We saw bluebirds
  
and a osprey

and a turkey vulture

and a belted kingfisher

and a killdeer

Plus all your typical feathered friends like woodpeckers, cardinals, jays, crows, robins, chickadees, titmice, hawks, canada geese, mallards, coots, various mutt ducks, and I'm sure many I can't remember.
We saw some flowers.  Lots of skunk cabbage blooms

not sure what it is (3/28/12 found out it's hairy bittercress)

 

and little blue flowers  Don't know what they are either.  I really liked these.  I thought they were really pretty.

and coltsfoot

and pussywillows

We saw a West Virginia White

and a Spring Azure though it seemed early

Let me think..

Oh ...

And a mink.  He was so cute.  He ran all along the bank and was so busy.  Then got in the water and swam a little.  We happened to be sitting on the bank working on some school work or else we probably would have missed him.  We were quietly reading so I don't think he was really paying any attention to us.  I saw the movement out of the corner of my eye and we got to watch all of his antics until he ambled off down the bank.  Here is a picture of what a mink looks like.

Here are some of the landscape pictures from our canal adventures.  Some areas are very picuresque while others were just downright ugly. Here are some of the prettier ones.

and this

and here

here where the Little Cuyahoga River meets the the Cuyahoga River

and here

here for a little light lunch

This bronze statue is in honor of the Indians who portaged their canoes approximately 9 miles between rivers.

This is the bridge in Barberton.

This was the newest section of the towpath that was recently finished but hasn't been dedicated yet.  I called first and they said it was fine to walk through but that there were some areas that weren't quite finished yet.  It did make me feel like we were breaking the law though and in fact I couldn't stop singing that song "Breakin the law breaking the law."  My daughter kept sayin "Mooooommmmm stoooop!"  I felt very rebellious. 

This is what the new trail looked like

I thought this was kind of neat.  This was the solar panel to light the 5 lights that were in the tunnel.

This is my favorite picture

Some parts of the trail were not our favorite but overall we did enjoy the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath.